Minutes: W3C Process CG 27 September 2023

Summary:
   This meeting was largely high-level discussion and triage of issues.
   There were no resolutions.

Full minutes:
   https://www.w3.org/2023/09/27-w3process-minutes.html

~fantasai

On 9/26/23 10:55, Philippe Le Hégaret wrote:
> Dial-in:
> https://www.w3.org/events/meetings/0535d249-dca6-4092-8374-2db1427f232f/20230927T070000/
> This meeting is at 7am Los Angeles, Wednesday 28 June 2023.
> 
> === Restarting the Process discussion post-TPAC 2023 and doing a bit of issue 
> triage. ===
> 
> 
> 1. P2023.1 update
> 2. Updates from TPAC 2023?
> 3. New issues (since June)
> 4. Formal Objections and Council issues
> 5. Process 2024: REC maintenance #589
> 6. Picking up some deferred issues
> 
> Philippe

Pasting the full minutes below for searchability...

W3C – DRAFT –
W3C Process CG 27 September 2023 Agenda. IRC log.
Attendees

Present
     cwilso, florian, JenStrickland, JoshCohen, plh, Rachel, RachYager, tzviya
Regrets
     TallTed
Chair
     plh
Scribe
     cwilso

Contents

     P2023.1 update
     Process 2023.1 update
     Updates from TPAC 2023?
     New issues (since June)
     Formal Objections and Council issues
     Process 2024: REC maintenance #589
     Summary of action items

Meeting minutes
P2023.1 update

plh: on the agenda, short update on P2023.1:
… call for review ended three weeks ago
… lots of conversations at TPAC on process
… we should look at new issues
… Florian suggested we look at pending issues on FOs and Council
… see if we have any P2024 issues
… I did not put on the agenda topics that are priorities for the AB
… we deferred a bunch of issues from p2023, so we should review and see what 
we want to un-defer for P2024
… anything else?
Process 2023.1 update

plh: it's been recommended that extraordinary delegation is used, is in vote.
… TAG election has been early notified; if we can get the FO addressed prior 
to TAG election starting we will increase the size of the TAG this round, 
otherwise it will have to wait.

Tzviya: I think we have enough votes from the potential council members to 
call it?

plh: yes, but members can change their votes until Oct 3.

<TallTed> most weeks for the next while, I'll have a conflict with RDF 
Canonicalization and Hash Working Group in this timeslot :-(
Updates from TPAC 2023?

plh: this is an open agenda item. before TPAC I identified several breakouts 
of interest to process peeps - incubation, chartering, ...
… anything else?

florian: I don't think we should jump into it immediately, I plan to summarize 
for the AB prior to proposing to the CG.
New issues (since June)

plh: new issues: some of these are editorial, I expect Florian will propose 
PRs if appropriate.

<plh> Github: w3c/w3process#775

plh: I assume this is editorial
… will flag it as such

w3c/w3process#776
… Too easy to confuse wide and horizontal review. I think one is contained in 
the other.

<plh> github: w3c/w3process#776

tzviya: I think this is one of the confusing points of the process. People 
generally use the terms interchangeably even though we know they're not. We 
should clarify.

fantasai: I think this is largely a problem with how we have been educating 
people on these terms. E.g. the document on wide review is 95% on horizontal 
review.
… the part that's outside horizontal review gets lost because we don't talk 
about it, and it doesn't have formal structure.

<plh> 6.2.2.1. Wide Review

florian: I agree there is confusion, Elika's hypothesis on why is plausible. 
Maybe we should start there.
… as to Tzviya's point about simplification, I agree, but we should not talk 
about process simplification in general, we need to be specific. Maybe this is 
one of those specific points, maybe it isn't. We should be detailed.

<fantasai> w3c/documentreview#12

plh: I don't hear anyone saying the process is broken...
… we could decide to push this to the guidebook first? it's not clear this is 
an actual process issue.

florian: maybe we should start there, and if it becomes obvious there is a 
process problem here, we circle back
… absent a specific idea, I would start with the Guide.

plh: the proposal is to move this to the Guide.
… this will be posted there unless someone reacts within a week

w3c/w3process#778

<plh> Github: w3c/w3process#778

plh: this is about veto by inaction
… this is not part of chartering; it's part of clarifying what happens when 
the Team basically makes decisions that are not recorded as Team Decisions.
… there is a thread since July on this. Elika was the last one to comment.
… this seems to be part of the chartering discussion. Is that the case?

florian: I suspect in theory it's broader than chartering, but in practice, 
90% of what people care about is chartering. We should table this until we've 
dealt with chartering.

plh: any objection?
… moving on...

editorial issue:L w3c/w3process#779
… seems like there is editorial convergence, we don't need to discuss.

florian: as long as we're converging in the issue, yes.

plh: next is w3c/w3process#781

<plh> Github: w3c/w3process#781

LS/CR candidates need to address wide reivew issues.

Florian: is this relevant to the WHATWG MOU?

PLH: no

cwilso: yes

plh: what worries me is Mike Champion's last request, that update requests be 
subject to the same requirement as transition requests.

florian: ah yes. I Don't think we want to require everything be addressed; 
that would make it difficult to do CR updates.

<plh> Add horizontal-review restrictions on transition

florian: it's not clear that the team has the ability to say "you have made 
progress on issues that you care about, but ignored everything that others 
have reported, so your update request is denied"

<fantasai> +1 to florian

florian: something along those lines would be desireable.

plh: we didn not introduce a requirement to address issues during the update 
requests, but we did introduce requirements to at least note which issues are 
flagged as needs resolution.

w3c/w3process#784

plh: the council rules currently place TBL on the critical path for applying 
the unanimous short circuit. We never intended him to be on the critical path, 
so we should fix this in 2024. (Presuming TBL is okay with that.)

florian: I've made a specific suggestion, would like to know what TBL thinks.

plh: yes.

<fantasai> I think the alternative path would be to specifically make him an 
optional member of the Councils.

<fantasai> but remain a formal member of the TAG

plh: ...we will need to ensure the TAG is okay with your resolution as well.

rachel: for horizontal review process, is it automatic? I'm curiously about 
the whole process

<plh> https://www.w3.org/Guide/documentreview/

plh: look at ^^
Formal Objections and Council issues

plh: let's move on. We have 9 open issues against the Council right now.

Florian: my general idea is we need to do maintenance on the director-free 
part of the PRocess. there are a few things we wanted to do in the review 
period, which TBL declined to do; I think we should pick those up for P2024.
… we should also deal with things that we have learned through experience with 
Councils.

plh: at the minimum, we should flag these issues as P2024 and go through them.
… Florian, I'll ask you to start picking issues to bring to the CG discussion
… some of these are flagged as needs AB discussion

florian: some of those already have an AB decision; not sure if any of them 
are waiting on AB discussion.

plh: next time, let's start going through pending PRs
Process 2024: REC maintenance #589

<plh> Github: w3c/w3process#589

florian: Tzviya earlier raised complex areas that are ripe for simplification. 
This is one of those areas. It's far from trivial to see how we can simplify 
at a glance; we can't just simplify the grammar or removing half the rules, 
because they are there for reasons.
… we don't want to make it possible to change a REC in ways that could not 
have originally been published as REC in the first place through the update 
process.

plh: over the summer, Ralph asked me to put more resources on ReSpec and 
Bikeshed, which should help in maintaining RECs

<plh> WCAG 2.1

plh: it's sometimes difficult to determine whether a change is substantive or 
editorial.
… for example, WCAG 2.1

<fantasai> https://www.w3.org/2023/Process-20230612/#correction-classes

tzviya: I think this goes hand-in-hand with issue 700 that Wendy raised on how 
to determine which of the two paths to use.
… w3c/w3process#700
… since there's no explicitly different name for the "living standard" 
version, it's very confusing.
… there needs to be some kind of guide for chairs et al to help understand how 
to choose between the paths.
… Wendy wrote some text about this.

plh: hopefully we're not suggesting simplifying by writing more documents.

tzviya: I'm saying as co-chair of EPUB that the experience of understanding 
this is... hard.
… it's not clear what maintenance vs stable rec means

florian: I think I know what you're talking about - the choice between recs 
that can gain new features or not

tzviya: yes.

florian: most groups should choose the type that can gain new features

tzviya: but you have the knowledge of having written the process. Chairs do 
not (necessarily)

<fantasai> I think we need more flow charts

tzviya: there's "the default of what the W3C has done historically" as the 
preferred process. It would be good to have some textual explanation.

plh: #700 feels like a guide issue, not a process issue.

florian: possibly
… we should still examine and see if we can make it simpler, as I agree it 
would be desirable, but I expect this to be challenging to simplify.

plh: tzviya, can you work with Wendy to get that primed?

tzviya: yes.

plh: sounds like this should be assigned to myself and Florian.
… I think this is still in P2024 issue to look into.

<plh> https://github.com/w3c/w3process/milestone/7

plh: let's spend a few minutes on deferred issues.
… there are 66 of them.
… anything we want to take up?
… I presume that the AB should figure out incubation before we take on issues 
around CGs and BGs

florian: We should talk about the precedence issue that we were blocked on 
PSIG for.

<plh> Github: w3c/w3process#574

elika: PSIG concluded that they recommend not defining the precedence.

<fantasai> https://www.w3.org/2023/09/11-psig-minutes.html

<fantasai> github: none

<fantasai> "RESOLUTION: Given what is known at this time, PSIG recommends that 
the Process Document not define an order of precedence, but rather address 
each conflict as it is found on a case-by-case-basis."

florian: I suspect we should follow their advice and close these things as no 
change.

plh: I didn't mean to make decisions today, so let's take a proposal that we 
close in two weeks.

florian: I will send this to the AB.

ACTION: florian: Forward PSIG conclusion to AB

plh: any other issues we need to pick up?
… if you see any, either change the milestone or propose to change the milestone.
… my hope is we can propose a new process to the AB by the end of March 2024.

fantasi: seems like a reasonable target.

plh: adjourned. Next meeting in two weeks, although I probably cannot be at 
that meeting.
Summary of action items

     florian: Forward PSIG conclusion to AB

Received on Wednesday, 11 October 2023 01:32:58 UTC